168 



EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



JOHN SMEATON— A LIFE AMONGST THE LIGHTHOUSES. 



WHAT BIOGEAPHY SHOtTLD TEACH. 



It is the fashion now-a-days, and a good 

 fashion it is, to explore God's ways in crea- 

 tion. Especially with the lower forms of Hfe, 

 has science been explanatory. Within the 

 limits of the knowable, we all seek to under- 

 stand everything; we wish to see demon- 

 strated — 



" How every small ephemeris sets forth 

 Purpose and science, if born but to die." 



And it were well if we carried this desire 

 somewhat further, and extending our in- 

 quiries, learned that God not only fashions a 

 diatom, a moth, or a mammoth for a purpose, 

 but that for His good ends also, He fashions 

 the muscles of the worker, and moulds, with 

 Almighty touches, the brain of the thinker. 

 Yet this is true. The true object of bio- 

 graphy, in tracing the conduct of an indi- 

 vidual is, according to Coleridge, to show 

 clearly what result his active life has pro- 

 duced on the well-being of his fellow-men, 

 and also what is his position as one of the 

 "great landmarks in the map of human 

 nature." It is yet more : the true biogra- 

 pher, whether in a sketch or in a volume, 

 ought to show what inner and higher im- 

 pulses filled the man — in what he differed 

 from his fellows in being prominently set 

 aside for his work ; how the man of science, 

 no less than the w arrior, the lawgiver, the 

 poet, or the sage, was expressly singled out 

 for one purpose, and how that purpose being 

 fulfilled, he waned and died out. and went to 

 the grave, where no thought can stir the still 

 brain, nor work move the stiff sinews of the 

 dead hand. 



Perhaps this overruling purpose is better 

 and more clearly seen in the lives of men of 

 science than in any other biography. Davy, 

 Ferguson, Newton, Stephenson, Smeaton, 



each and all had an impulse which no one 

 could restrain, which adhered to them through 

 life, and left them only in death. In John 

 Smeaton's case let us hasten to prove it. 



HIS BIETH AND INFANCY. 



On a May morning — rather when May 

 was lapsing into June — and at a little York- 

 shire village, in 1724, John Smeaton was born. 

 The family had planted a firm foot in York- 

 shire ; grandfather had built the house there, 

 and father was a " respectable attorney :" 

 so write the biographers, presuming, of 

 course, that attorneys can be respectable, 

 upon which Smeaton ever had his doubts, 

 and the present writer does not offer an opi- 

 nion. John hated the attorney's desk. En- 

 grossing was not his pursuit, but, unlike the 

 clerk in Pope's well-known lines, he did not 

 pen a stanza, but he drew a plan of some 

 piece of machinery. He was eminently con- 

 structive. A little fellow in petticoats even, 

 he disregarded toys, save as machines. He 

 coidd set the leg of a Dutch doll, and then he 

 would away with it ; but he loved to watch the 

 millwrights, and those who drew water from 

 the well, or put in action the simple machi- 

 nery of the pump. He went home after such 

 an exhibition, and made a working model 

 out of an old piece of bored pipe. He also, 

 greatly to the terror of his friends, for he was 

 then about six years old, made a working 

 model of a windmill, and mounted the highest 

 barn his father had, to fix it. At fifteen, he 

 had constructed an engine to turn rose-work, 

 and gave his friends boxes in wood and ivory 

 as specimens. Clearly he was not born to serve 

 a writ, or to issue a distringas. Good Mr. 

 Holmes, in 1742, visiting his father, sees this, 

 and is wonderstruck at the young mecha- 

 nician. He forged his iron and steel, melted 

 his metal, fashioned every tool to work with. 



